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The fan mail I get from kids are asking me questions which they do not ask their mothers and fathers. Because if they had, why write to me, a perfect stranger?

Maurice Sendak

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Maurice Sendak
Age: 83 †
Born: 1928
Born: June 10
Died: 2012
Died: May 8
Artist
Cartoonist
Graphic Designer
Illustrator
Painter
Screenwriter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Maurice Bernard Sendak
Asks
Perfect
Fathers
Father
Mothers
Write
Mail
Mother
Stranger
Kids
Questions
Writing
Asking
Fans

More quotes by Maurice Sendak

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Bumble-Ardy is a very wicked little child as far as I'm concerned. He's not to be trusted.
Maurice Sendak
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Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad. Kids lead a very private life. And I was a typical child, I think. I was a liar.
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Because love is so enormous, the only thing you can think of doing is swallowing the person that you love entirely.
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Children do live in fantasy and reality they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.
Maurice Sendak
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I never can satisfy some need in me to achieve something of incredible hight. For my sake. It puzzles me deeply. And it sours my life. So there is a permanent dissatisfaction.
Maurice Sendak
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I’m not Hans Christian Andersen. Nobody’s gonna make a statue in the park with a lot of scrambling kids climbing up me. I won’t have it, okay?
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Life has only gotten better personally for me as I've gotten older. I mean, being young was such a gross waste of time. I was just such a miserable, miserable person.
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Inside all of us is... hope. Inside all of us is... fear. Inside all of us is... adventure. Inside all of us is a wild thing.
Maurice Sendak
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I don't know how to write a children's book.
Maurice Sendak
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When Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can't explain... I don't need to. I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.
Maurice Sendak
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I stress character, character, character.
Maurice Sendak
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I know there are supposedly happy people in this world. I never believed it, but I take it for granted. God knows, they're all on television.
Maurice Sendak
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I have been doodling with ink and watercolor on paper all my life. It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpenin g exercises.
Maurice Sendak
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I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of [writing] something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter.
Maurice Sendak
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I'm not jaded. I never have been jaded. I've always been surprised at my success. I've always enjoyed it.
Maurice Sendak
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It was inconceivable to me as a child that I would be an adult. I mean, one assumed that it would happen, but obviously it didn't happen, or if it did, it happened when your back was turned, and then suddenly you were there. So I couldn't have thought about it much.
Maurice Sendak
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And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.
Maurice Sendak
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As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.
Maurice Sendak
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A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful. Even as a kid, my sister, who was the eldest, brought books home for me, and I think I spent more time sniffing and touching them than reading. I just remember the joy of the book, the beauty of the binding. The smelling of the interior. Happy.
Maurice Sendak
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Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what's real and what's not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
Maurice Sendak